Chuck Schuldiner Project

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Rotheads - Sewer Fiends

There is something endlessly appealing about dungeon death metal. I'm talking about the stuff ripped straight out of the basement, ghoulish art, lo fi production, throat crunching riffs and all. This is the stuff of dreams - sure a lot of it isn't great but it's the aesthetic that it conjures up which really gets me going and the face melting, bone tearing assault of the music as you find new and innovative ways to piss off your parents with it that makes it exciting. Rothead's debut Sewer Fiends has this wonderful death metal malodour and so much more.

When it comes down to it - yes there are a lot of limitations to this record. The production isn't great and the songs could do with some trimming. That's just the nature of a lot of these young eath metal bands just starting out and trying to make their way forward in this crazy old messed up world of ours. I'm used to that madness and so are you. Again - what makes Rothead special is their ability to conjure up an aesthetic and create music that really just takes you back to a point in the early 90s when nothing about death metal was 'okay' and you'd be consistently struggling to deal with the blasphemous noise coming out of your stereo.

The sense of fun that you get as you dive into songs like From The Glowing Goo Rise with its Hammer Horror-esque imagery and conjurations of satanic imagery and monstrous demons is a special thing. Getting lost in this brand of face crunching metal is just something that nerds like me like to do. It's about the experience of pulling apart a record and sinking your teeth into every riff, even if not every riff is a winner. Yet Rotheads are hitting all the right notes and leaving me thirsty for blood.Find them on Facebook!https://www.facebook.com/rotheads